Hybrid error correction in fragmented IoT media streams

Abstract

Wireless personal area networks (WPANs), as most IoT networking technologies, rely on constrained low power devices that support a trade‐off between signal coverage and transmission rates. WPANs are characterized for medium to low transmission rates over low distances. The transmission rates, however, are high enough to support maximum transmission unit (MTU) sizes that are large enough to enable the transmission of IPv6 datagrams. One such WPAN technologies is associated with the IEEE 802.15.4 physical layer. Because IEEE 802.15.4 does not natively support IP encapsulation, an adaptation mechanism known as IPv6 over low‐power wireless personal area networks (6LoWPAN) is used to this end. For large datagrams like those generated when transmitting speech frames, 6LoWPAN fragments them in order to comply with the 127‐byte IEEE 802.15.4 MTU size. Fragmentation, however, aggravates the effects of network packet loss. This article explores this problem and attempts to find a mechanism that overcomes these limitations. Specifically, it introduces a hybrid error correction algorithm that dynamically adjusts the number of fragments that are transmitted in order to balance application layer loss and transmission rate.